Headlock
by Person4
Summary: It was supposed to be a week of nothing but fun in the sun, until a sudden attack leads to Buttercup disappearing into the ocean. When she's finally dragged out again nothing will ever be the same. Inspired by FusionFall, but set fully in the PPGverse.
1. How Can You Lose?

It's a sad fact in the life of superheroes that vacations come rarely and last briefly. When chances were good that if you spent a weekend away from home you'd come back to find that a smoking crater ringed with a few crumbling buildings was all that remained of your city, it didn't take long to decide that it just wasn't a risk worth taking.

In twelve long years of crime-fighting the Powerpuff Girls had never gotten to take a _real_ vacation. That wasn't to say that they never got a chance to relax, but those chances were always spent on things like day trips to the nearby lake or a night spent camping in the woods as far away from Fuzzy Lumpkin's territory as they could get without leaving the treeline; always short, always in the area immediately around the city, always ready to fly straight back to Townsville the second the Mayor got in touch to let them know disaster had struck the city for the umpteen-billionth time.

It wasn't as though it really bothered them. It was all they'd ever known. Sure, they might sigh and daydream a little when their friends came back from their summer vacations bursting with stories about all the things they'd seen and done, but they'd always get over it quickly and happily go on with their day. In some ways they were better off than their friends anyway; even if they never got to spend a full week at Disneyland, they could fly out for a few hours of fun whenever it seemed like it would be safe to leave the city for just that short a time. If things had gone on that way forever they'd never really have felt bad about it.

But that didn't mean that they didn't immediately jump on the chance to have a _real_ vacation the first time it was possible.

It was all thanks to E-Male. Just a few months before summer began he moved into Townsville's closest neighboring city, although they hadn't realized it until his feats of daring-do became renowned enough in his new home for news of them to spread all the way to the girls' local news. With a new superhero nearby--and a hero whose incredible speed would make getting to Townsville in a pinch no problem for him at all besides--suddenly all kinds of options opened themselves up to them.

Being good, responsible superheroes they didn't take advantage of this right away, of course. There were many things that needed to be taken care of first. Letting E-Male actually know about what they wanted and getting him to agree with it (with a few pointed reminders that he and the rest of the AWSM still owed them _big time_ after they'd saved their butts twelve years before) so that they could come up with a schedule for when he could take over during their summer break well ahead of time, for one. Then there was providing him with a spare hotline phone so the Mayor could contact him, picking a place they all wanted to go, and the very important but almost forgotten step of letting the Professor know about their plans.

Bubbles wanted to go see the wild ponies of Assateague. Blossom argued for Washington DC, extolling the virtues of the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, and maintaining that since they'd spent their lives upholding the law they should see the spot where it was made. Buttercup insisted that the most awesome thing they could possibly do would be going on a whitewater rafting trip, the toughest one they could find, but the Professor quickly shut that idea down with a reminder that while _they_ didn't need to worry about turning into a giant walking bruise from being banged around by rapids _he_ wasn't so lucky.

For the amount of time they spent arguing over it the place they ended up going wasn't really that big a deal; it was only a nice beach on the ocean not very far from Townsville. But they'd rented a cabin there for a whole _week_, a week of sun and sand and never once being interrupted by a call saying that someone from Monster Island was trashing the business district, or that the grocery store nearest to the Mayor's house was out of his favorite kind of pickles and he needed them to pop across town to find him a jar.

So of _course_ on their first morning there they were greeted by a giant robot barreling towards their cabin as soon as they stepped out the door after breakfast.

"_Mojo_," the three girls groaned in chorus, immediately recognizing the distinctive signs of his handiwork in the simianesque design and purple detailing.

Blossom looked down at the swimsuit she was wearing and sighed. "Come on, girls. The ocean will have to wait." They were in the air and flying towards the robot in a shot. When they were close enough to be heard she called out, "_Seriously_, Mojo? I thought you gave up on the robots years ago when you finally realized we'd always be able to beat them!"

A panel slid open on the robots 'face', revealing a speaker hidden beneath it and letting the sound of evil laughter clearly fill the air. "Foolish Powerpuff Girls, that is exactly what I, _Mojo Jojo_, wanted you to think! All this time you've thought 'Ah, we don't need to worry about robots from Mojo anymore, just lasers, and death rays, and other weapons of incredible destruction that he was able to invent with his incredible intellect' while all along I was biding my time, waiting for you girls to become complacent while I created my more powerful robot _ever_! A robot so _perfect_ that even you Powerpuff Girls would be helpless against it, because with so many years of work put into it it couldn't be anything less than extremely powerful, not moderately powerful or somewhat powerful like those robots which only had weeks or months of development instead of years, but _extremely_--"

"Oh, shut up and stop ruining our trip already!" Buttercup cut in, breaking formation to shoot forward and attack when she got sick of listening to him ramble.

There were five large guns of some type attached to the weapon; one attached to each hand, one at each shoulder, and on sticking out of the top of its head. Each tracked her movement as she came closer, and she kept a close eye on all of them as close to at once as she could while she got closer. She was so focused on them that she didn't even notice another panel, small and unobtrusive in the center of its chest, slide open. In the shadows behind it only the tip of the muzzle of a gun could be seen, so small and plain compared to Mojo's usual flashy ray guns that even if she'd noticed it Buttercup would probably have scoffed at the idea that such a simple-looking thing could hurt her.

But when it fired the discharge was massive. Buttercup's entire body was engulfed in a bright violet light and she was blasted away from the robot, shooting out over the ocean until she was just a speck in the distance.

Again the sound of Mojo's laughter rang out from the speaker. "At _last_. Now you see the might of my greatest invention, The Powerpuff We--"

Bubble's foot slammed into the head of the robot before he could get any further, taking advantage of his momentary distraction to get her attack in. "Hey!" she yelled, "Don't hurt my sister when she's supposed to be on vacation!"

"Bubbles, watch out, ten-o'-clock!" Blossom called out to her as she joined the fight, nodding towards another panel which had just slipped open.

For a so-called 'most powerful robot ever' it didn't take them long to take down Mojo's newest creation between the two of them. Now that they knew what to watch for it wasn't hard to keep an eye out for the movement of new guns being revealed. Apparently they were the only _real_ weapons the robot had; the big obvious blasters never shot once, but the smaller ones were hidden all over its frame. If Buttercup hadn't flown ahead he might actually have managed to get all of them at least once by using three different guns in that first sneak attack. But the problem with a sneak attack was that once the target became aware of it it lost most of its effectiveness.

"Curses!" Mojo shouted as the robot crumbled around him.

Blossom and Bubbles laughed and high-fived, ignoring the robot's cockpit and the monkey within it for the moment as it vanished under crumbling metal. "Some 'perfect' robot," Blossom gloated happily. "We've had tougher fights against ones he made when we were five! I bet Buttercup won't even be too disappointed that she missed out on the fight when it was that easy."

"Um," Bubbles said, looking out over the ocean with a small frown, "how far did she go anyway? Shouldn't she be back by now?"

Blossom frowned and tapped her chin thoughtfully. "Well, this is a strange place and we haven't had enough time to learn the area yet. Maybe she's having trouble finding the right stretch of beach?" She drifted down towards the ground as pieces of the broken robot began to shift from the spots they'd settled in, indicating that Mojo was starting to dig his way out of the wreckage. "I'm sure she'll be back before we're done getting Mojo locked up."

Bubbles looked out over the ocean one more time, then smiled and started to follow Blossom down. "You've gotta be right. I mean, it's _Buttercup_; no way _Mojo_ could ever really hurt her!"

o 0 O 0 o

She'd never really known what people were talking about when they warned about strong currents. It was _water_, water wasn't even hard for _normal_ people to move quickly through. As a girl who could probably swim through solid concrete if she put a little effort into it, and was someplace where nobody would mind her tearing up their road, any difficulty water might have posed was wiped out for her.

She understood now. The ocean held her tightly and tore her forward no matter what she tried to do. It _shouldn't_ have been able to, she was sure of it, but somehow it didn't seem to matter.

She was a Powerpuff Girl! And it was just a little water!

But every time she tried to fly out of it a wave would close over her head before she'd lifted more than an inch or two into the air and force her back down, no matter how hard she tried to force her body to just pass through it.

She was Buttercup! She was too tough to be forced anywhere against her will!

But when she tried to use her superstrength to swim against the current she didn't seem to get anywhere at all. Even if it felt like she was moving forward, when she turned her head and looked towards the shore she could see that she was still being swept in the opposite direction, and with every second she had less energy to keep trying.

She could survive in space! She shouldn't have any problem doing the same underwater, should she?

But when she changed her tack and tried swimming downward instead--sure that if she could just reach the ocean floor she be able to walk along it to get back to the shore, or at least out of the current--her eyes stung so badly from the salt water all around that she needed to close them tightly and couldn't see where she was going, and her lungs began to burn from lack of oxygen before she even brushed the bottom. She forced herself to keep going until she hit it, managing to twist around and stand unsteadily on her feet, but before she'd taken more than two wobbly steps in what she hoped was the right direction she could no longer hold back the urge to gasp for air. Immediately she began to choke at the water flooding into her mouth and she started scrambling to get back to the surface, losing almost all control of herself as her body was overwhelmed by the type of mad panic she'd rarely ever felt in her life.

When she finally reached the surface the current had pulled her into a rocky stretch of water, but the mindless instincts which were currently controlling her were too busy trying to somehow manage to gasp for air and vomit up ocean water at once to spare any attention to avoiding the stones as her body shot towards them. Before she was even fully aware of what was happening she'd slammed into the huge rocks with just their tips sticking out of the water with her arm, her hip, then once, twice, with her head.

_It shouldn't hurt so much!_ She was...

She was...

She...

And then there was no thought left in her. 


	2. You Look Half Dead Half the Time

Ace leaned back against the plywood back to one of the stupid midway games lining the back edge of the carnival, and scowled out at the ocean as he tapped the ash from his cigarette.

They'd thought this gig was going to be a _big deal_. Sure, they were so low on the lineup set up for the grandstand that they were the opening act of the opening act and they knew damned well that the only reason they were there at all was because the guy in charge of booking had a last minute cancellation and was a fan from listening to them at his usual watering-hole, but it didn't matter. However spur-of-the-moment it was, being one of the featured bands at the big state fair would get them exposed to tons more people than they ever got playing to regulars on the bar circuit. From there word of mouth would spread and it would be no time at all before they finally got their big break, he'd been sure of it. And, hell, even if they didn't they were getting paid better for their three days working there than they did over two weeks at their usual venues.

But the annoyance he'd felt ever since finding out who the fair'd lined up for their headliner overwhelmed the good mood the job had originally put him in. It was some freakin' flash-in-the-pan country star. _Country!_ It was like if someone had made Nirvana play as the opening act for Billy Ray Cyrus!

Or had Cobain gone and offed himself before Achy Breaky Heart had started pissing Ace off when he was a kid by showing up everywhere for months straight? He'd never been that great with his history lessons.

Hell, he had a better comparison anyway. It was like if _Fuzzy Lumpkins_ had shown up and tried to get them to open for his god-awful banjo twanging.

He took a long drag off the cigarette, a good part of him hoping that some stuffed-shirt soccer mom would catch a whiff of the smoke and come around to try bitching him out over smoking a cigarette around the little kiddies. Turning over a new leaf might have meant that he couldn't go off looking for a way to vent his annoyance, but watching an uptight broad turn ghost-white and scramble to get away when she mistook him for a monster from just the color of his skin and the flash of a fang was always a good mood-lightener. And the best part was that there wasn't any way he could get trouble over it; he just had to say that all _he'd_ done was smile at the nice lady and she'd gone and made him feel like a _freak_ over his rare skin and tooth conditions and suddenly _she'd_ be the bad guy.

But it looked like the world was against him that day. The wind sent his smoke sweeping high into the air, away from the crowds passing by on the other side of the small booth to where it couldn't catch the attention of any soccer moms, or even any whiny hippies who might've tried to lecture him about what he was doing to his body. All he could do to vent his frustration was go on glowering across the water.

Which was why he was able to catch the flash of green in a rocky stretch of water a good distance from the shore just before a wave covered it.

He tilted his head to make his sunglasses slide further down his nose so he could see the world in brighter colors, and squinted out towards the spot where he's seen the green. "I swear, if Billy's tryin' to swim out there _again_ he's gonna have to make it back on his own," he muttered, shading his eyes with his hands and leaning forward like the slight change in distance might somehow allow him to see whatever it was more clearly.

He was just about to give up on whatever it was after several moments of finding nothing in the water but more water when there was a brief lull in the waves and the water dipped low enough for him to clearly see what was caught among the rocks.

"Holy _crap_," he exclaimed, not even noticing the cigarette slipping from his lips and falling to the ground when his mouth dropped open wide.

All right, so _technically_ it could've been anyone out there. Anyone with black hair who didn't mind wearing what looked to be a girl's one-piece swimsuit anyway. The person was too far out for him to see anything other than that for sure, and the only shoddy evidence about who he was sure it must be that he could've offered that anyone else might buy was the stripes on the swimsuit; though the girls had started looking for something a little more stylish than the shapeless sack-like dresses of their childhood, the thick black stripe cutting through their personal color had practically become their trademark as the closest thing to a superhero uniform they had. And that was something any kid with a hero fetish could copy.

The thing was though, you didn't get pummeled by someone on a regular basis for a good hunk of your life without learning to recognize them even when they were just a speck on the horizon. Heck, it'd gotten to the point where he could tell when one of the girls was nearby just by the sound of the wind overhead, the way it changed direction and whooshed purposefully through the spaces between buildings as they flew around saving the day. It didn't matter that the last time he'd seen her up close and personal, back when they were still sure the band was just some new scam, she'd still been stuck in the gawky in-between stages of puberty that her body must've changed out of since then. He was still absolutely sure that he was right in thinking the girl was Buttercup.

There was a part of him, larger than he'd ever admit to anyone seeing as he was supposed to be on the straight and narrow now, that wanted to just lean back and not do a thing. All the midway booths which the fair runners had so thoughtfully set up with their backs facing the ocean, creating a long barricade to try keeping any stupid kiddies from spotting the water and trying to jump in, now became a perfect wall to keep anyone else from spotting her. He didn't know if one of them even _could_ drown, but if it was possible he could just lean back and watch her pay for every attack she'd ever thrown at him and his gang while hundreds of people who would all have _loved_ to have been the one to save a Powerpuff Girl passed by behind him.

But before that idea had even fully passed through his mind he was already pulling off his leather jacket, kicking off his shoes, and carefully setting his shades on top of them. He'd put too much freakin' time and effort into reforming--into getting people to _believe_ he and the guys had reformed--to let himself keep following _that_ train of thought. He'd never been a murderer anyway... not a successful one, anyway, and these days he was pretty sure the girls would've survived the few nastier tricks he'd thrown at them even if everything had gone as planned.

"Crap!" he swore again when he hit the water. The fair was set up on a beachless section of ocean that didn't offer a chance to ease in from hot sand to warm shallows, just a short drop into water that was immediately deep enough to swim in. Even though it was a hot summer day the ocean there was still way too cold for his taste. He liked his heat almost as much as Snake did; he didn't wear a jacket in the summer _just_ to look cool. Only mostly.

Well, there wasn't any time to get used to it. All he could do was start pushing himself forward through the water, and feel glad that his parents had forced him to take enough swimming lessons when they'd wanted to get him out of their hair as a kid that he could make decent time even with his quickly waterlogged pants. Still, it was good that she'd gotten stuck where she was; he'd heard that there was a nasty riptide just past the rocks, and if he'd had to go through it to get at her she'd have just had to wait while he hunted down someone with a boat.

Even from the shore it had been obvious that she must be unconscious--like a Powerpuff Girl would just flop around in the water if they were aware of the world around them--but he was still relieved to see it really was true when he reached her. Sure, it might not be the best sign for her health, but he'd heard of the way drowning people could freak out when someone came to save them, and with her strength Buttercup would've probably knocked his block clean off if she'd turned out to be one of them.

He hauled her up so her head was as high above the water as he could get it, twisting around so waves breaking against the rock would splash all over the back of his head instead of her face, and considered his options. In theory he knew the right way to swim someone to shore, or at least the way they always showed people doing it in TV shows and movies, but it didn't feel like a good idea to him. With his soaked pants already dragging at him he didn't like the thought of giving up one of his arms too.

It was a good thing that the rocks she'd been caught in gave him something he could brace her against, because without them the only other thought that came to him would've been useless. He scrambled to pull off his belt as quickly as he could so she wouldn't be left without him holding onto her for long, then he propped her up on one of the stones that stuck the furthest out of the water and turned his back to her, pulling her arms forward over his shoulders. As soon as they were positioned right he looped his belt around her wrists and pulled it tight, trapping her arms closed around him so he could piggyback her to shore. When he took his couple of trial strokes he realized it would have been better if he had a second belt to complete the piggyback position by cinching her legs up at his waist--with them dragging he kept kicking her in the shins when he paddled his feet--but, heck, with his legs weighted down his arms would be doing most of the work dragging them back anyway.

Carrying her made the trip back to shore a lot longer than the one out, especially since he tried to keep his shoulders awkwardly hunched up so her head would stay boosted higher out of the water, but he didn't worry about it. With her chest pressed right against his back it was easy to feel that she was breathing, even if it was shallow and faint. As long as there was breath left in her she'd be fine in the end; every person who lived in Townsville had seen Buttercup and her sisters get over worse injuries than just choking down some seawater before. It was a good thing too, because if she'd actually been drowned he _wasn't_ gonna try working out CPR on her. He could just see it ending in her waking up in the middle of it, getting the wrong idea, and beating the hell out of him again.

Pulling them back up onto the shore where he'd started out turned out to be more of a hassle than he'd expected, a downside to dragging her along the way he had that he'd never even thought of showing itself almost immediately. He'd felt like luck was on his side when he saw there was a metal ladder riveted into the short little cliff of a shore so he wouldn't need to drag them both up it without any help, but as soon as she'd mostly left the water and stopped floating gravity began dragging her body straight down. Her arms slid down his shoulders as she dropped, and the belt holding them together was pulled tight across his neck with all her weight behind it.

He dropped straight back into the water, cursing under his breath as soon as he got it back, and began rearranging her. Unable to think of anything else that might work that wouldn't involve yelling for someone else to come help him drag her out, he twisted her around so she was holding on to him from the side instead of behind and then wrapped one arm firmly around her waist to hold her in place. Mostly only being able to use one arm to pull them up wouldn't be fun, but it was better than being strangled.

As soon as they managed to make it to dry land he untied his belt from her, not bothering to try to catch her when she flopped straight to the ground. He dropped down beside her, his limbs feeling watery from being back on solid ground after swimming, and examined her as he reached out gather back up the clothes he'd left there.

He'd been so focused on just getting her to shore that he hadn't taken a good look at her before then, so it was the first time he'd really noticed the state she was in beyond just 'unconscious'. He'd never seen her looking so rough before. If she'd been a normal girl he'd have said it looked like someone had gone to town on her with a nail bat. What few parts of her body weren't already black and blue and scraped all over looked like it would just be a matter of time before they got there, and when he looked more closely he could see a red streak trailing down the side of her neck that turned out to lead to a much larger bloodstain on the back of her swimsuit when he tipped her on her side to see. When he gingerly felt at the back of her head his fingers came back tipped in blood, but whatever wound it was coming from wasn't large enough for him to find by touch. Well, head wounds always did bleed like a bitch, as he'd learned from experience from the many times when a strike from her or one of her sisters had sent his head slamming back into a wall, so hopefully it wasn't too bad.

But she _wasn't_ a normal girl, no bat would manage to do that much damage to her, and he _really_ wished he knew exactly what had so he could know if he should grab the guys and get the hell away from the fairgrounds before some giant monster came stomping through after her. Sure, he couldn't see one around even though you'd think they'd be visible for miles, but that didn't matter. The stupid things seemed like they could practically appear out of nowhere; Townsville would've stayed a lot wholer over the years if anybody could ever actually spot the things coming.

He'd planned on ditching her as soon as she was out of the ocean, figuring that as long as she was alive she'd wake up before long and could yell for some help out of the hoards of jerks around if she needed it, but seeing how she looked put the kibosh on that idea. It suddenly seemed a lot less likely that she'd wake up anytime soon, and he could just imagine what would happen if someone found an unconscious Powerpuff Girl who'd had the crap beaten out of her just dumped back there. He'd be willing to bet it wouldn't even be five minutes before someone said 'Hey, aren't some of their enemies here? They must've done it!' and then nobody would take a second to realize it'd been years since the last time anyone had heard of them as much as picking a pocket or think to wait for her to come to to make sure they'd gotten it right; the shit would just hit the fan. It'd happened over less before.

He was pretty sure he could get her to the area where the trailer he and the gang were staying in was set up without being seen. All he had to do was follow the back of the midway to its end and he'd be in the 'backstage' area of the fair. Even there he'd be safe from the crowds visiting the fair. Just like the games had been lined up to keep stupid kids from spotting the ocean and getting ideas, most of the food stands had been lined up to protect any delicate middle-class eyes from having to see carnies in their natural environment on the other side of them. But anybody who worked for the fair, or had been hired to perform there, could be hanging around back there to see them when they came through.

Well hell, he decided--picking her up and wrapping his coat around her so she'd at least be covered up a little if someone _did_ see them--he'd spent _how_ many years as a criminal? If it turned out that going lawful had made him so rusty that he couldn't even duck around a few trailers without being spotted he'd have to die of shame.

Yeah, it'd be a cakewalk, he thought, his confidence growing by the second. He just had to get as far as the rest of the gang, that was it.

And then they could figure out what the hell to do about her. 


	3. Come Back Come Back To Me

"Are you sure this is the right thing to do, Blossom?" Bubbles asked, her arms wrapped tightly around herself and her face pale.

"We need to at least try looking on our own before we let anyone else know she hasn't turned up," Blossom replied. She tried to sound like she believed it, but her voice wavered uncertainly. "You know what a worry-wart the Professor can be. We wouldn't want to upset him over nothing if she's just playing a trick on us because she's annoyed about missing the fight."

"But what if she's _not_ playing a prank?"

Blossom bit down on her lip hard, her face twisting. "This would still be the best option. Who could find her more quickly than the two of us? Getting more people involved now would be wasting valuable time that we could spend searching." She dipped down until she water hovering just above the water, the tips of her feet almost touching its surface, and looked around. "Listen, you go north and I'll go south along the coast just as far as the next town in our direction. Then we'll head out to the edge of territorial waters--that's twelve-miles out, Bubbles--and loop back here. Keep your eyes as sharp as they can get, make sure to X-Ray to see what's below the surface, and if we haven't seen any sign of her by the time we get back here _then_ we'll tell the Professor she's missing."

"Okay, let's do it!" Bubbles exclaimed, and flashed Blossom a smile in spite of her obvious worry. "And when we get Buttercup back here we'll bury her in the sand for making us worry!"

Blossom laughed and nodded. "Right!"

They split up, each heading off in their assigned direction at a slower pace than they usually flew. Neither wanted to miss spotting Buttercup because they were going too fast.

Bubbles really wished that she could find a dolphin in the water nearby, even if she couldn't find her sister. Fish were no good for talking too, they just flopped and stared and if they made any kind of sense at all she didn't know how to hear or see it. Dolphin she might not be _good_ at since she hardly ever saw one, not like the squirrels and cats which were easy to find in Townsville, but she was sure she could at least manage to ask if they'd seen Buttercup or could help her find her.

She did see the occasional boat here and there; motor boats puttering around not too far from the shore, and fishing vessels further out. She asked the people on board if they could help, but the conversations went more or less the same again and again.

"Excuse me!" she'd call out to them, and sometimes they'd be shocked to see a girl hovering above the water, sometimes they'd be excited to see a Powerpuff Girl in real life, and occasionally they just didn't seem to notice or care that anything unusual was happening at all. Either way she'd go on to ask, "Have you seen another girl who looks a lot like me, just with dark hair and green eyes? Oh, and she's probably frowning!"

The ones who'd recognized her knew at once who she was talking about and tried to jump on the chance to get gossip about a Powerpuff Girl being missing in action. She wondered if they knew how lucky they were that Buttercup was the one missing instead of the one doing the searching, because the way they were acting like hearing the newest juicy rumors was more important than her sister's safety would have made her _so_ mad and it wouldn't have been fun for them.

But Bubbles knew that the more important thing to focus on was that they hadn't seen a trace of her anymore than any of the other sailors had, and that she should move on and keep searching instead of wasting time getting angry.

She flew on and on, and still hadn't seen any sign of Buttercup by the time she reached the next town but she didn't _want_ to just loop back. Even though she knew that Blossom was the leader and that she should listen to her plan, if they were going to look for Buttercup all by themselves instead of having the Professor call for help she didn't want to stop looking until she'd found her, or at least until she was sure that she definitely wasn't in the direction Bubbles had searched.

She was floating uncertainly in place when she spotted a ferris wheel in the distance and immediately perked up. "Ooh, a fair! I bet _that's_ where Buttercup is! She just didn't want to wait for us to get back from putting Mojo in jail, so she went to have fun on her own!"

Cheered by the thought she immediately shot off to the fairgrounds, and landed neatly in the center of it. She _loved_ fairs, especially ones that had livestock competitions and let everyone walk through to see the horsies, and cows, and fuzzy sheep, and adorable little bunnies. But she wasn't there to have fun for herself, so aside from looking longingly at the ticket booths scattered around the fairgrounds once or twice she made herself focus on what Buttercup would want to do instead.

She always loved the games, or at least the ones that didn't involve strength that the Professor would allow her to play; he'd always refused to let any of them try the ones like hitting a target with a mallet to ring a bell or knocking over bottles with a ball because he said their super-strength gave them an unfair advantage. But Buttercup would happily spend all her tickets on the ones she was allowed to play, winning toy after toy then happily giving most of them to Bubbles because she didn't really care about the prizes, just the _winning_. So Bubbles decided that the midway would be the best place to start searching.

She was halfway there when a poster for the fair's grandstand shows caught her eye, or, more accurately, a picture printed on it. "_Ewwww_," she said, her nose wrinkling with disgust, "the Gangreen Gang!"

Right then and there she decided that she had to be wrong about Buttercup being there. Even if she had been earlier she would have left as soon as she'd seen one of those posters. All of the girls were sure that they really _had_ reformed--it had been years since the last time they'd caught them doing any crimes, and none of them thought that the Gang had the patience to pull off any sort of evil plot that required them to lie low and work on a music career for years--but they still didn't want to spend any time around them, Buttercup least of all. Bubbles _thought_ that she wasn't really that angry over the way Ace had once used her anymore, but what she just couldn't get over was everyone knowing that he'd been her first crush. She'd rather go out of her way to avoid him when he didn't deserve a beating than risk anybody teasing her about being around him.

Taking one last wistful look at the fair she flew back out over the ocean to complete her loop.

She didn't find anything more on the way back than she had on her way out. More empty water, more boats with totally unhelpful crews. If Buttercup had ever been there any sign of her was gone by the time Bubbles got there.

When she finally made it back to where she'd started Blossom was already there waiting. Bubbles could tell from the hopeful look on her sister's face when she saw her that she hadn't had any better luck, and felt terrible that she had to let her down by shaking her head. "I'm sorry, Blossom," she said once she was in hearing distance. "I thought I saw somewhere she might have gone, but when I looked around I found out I was wrong."

Blossom closed her eyes, obviously focusing on controlling her expression so it would remain calm, then nodded. "Okay then, we know what we need to do."

They reached out to take each other's hand as they floated slowly down to the porch of their small cabin on the beach, holding on tightly for support when they pushed the door open.

The Professor looked up from the book he was reading to greet them with a wide smile. "Welcome back, girls! Having fun on your first day of vacation."

Bubbles eyes were already starting to well up with tears when Blossom started to say, "Professor, there's something we need to tell you..." 


	4. With Big Intention

_Note:_ This isn't especially important in this chapter, but I just thought I'd drop a note to say that in the first few chapters I tried to keep in mind the girl's canonical unique bodies when I was describing things that they were doing, but I suddenly realized that keeping them handless/noseless/bug-eyed/etc. wouldn't actually work with this story. I don't want to spoil the plot for anyone who hasn't played _FusionFall_, but it's suffice to say that once Buttercup's feeling better she's going to be out in public enough that the mystery of what happened to the missing Powerpuff Girl wouldn't stay very mysterious for long if they stood out as much as they do in canon. So I'll be writing them as having regular-looking bodies from now on and if you want you can assume that they look the same as they do in the game (except a little older) since they have fingers and everything in there. (If you were paying close attention in the second chapter you might have noticed that Ace also has at least his leather jacket from FusionFall instead his vest from the series.)

* * *

Doctor Edwin Marten was a well-known figure to most of the established criminals in Townsville. They couldn't go to most doctors when they'd gotten roughed up; even if they'd just been innocently injured in one of Townsville's regular monster attacks or some stupid accident everyone at the hospital would _still_ assume that they'd managed to escape from a fight with the Powerpuff Girls and would have the cops greet them as soon as they were through getting treated.

Not so with old Doc Marten. He'd treat anyone, anywhere, anytime, no questions asked. It didn't matter what you needed him for, even if he'd never actually been trained in it he'd figure it out if that's what it took to get his pay; it didn't matter if it was veterinary medicine for Mojo, demonic dentistry when Him got a tooth cracked, or even plastic surgery when someone wanted a new face so they could get the hell out of Townsville and start there life over without any chance of the Powerpuff Girls recognizing them. Not many people went for that one, since he knew it meant they wouldn't be coming in for his services again he charged a truly astronomical amount of money for it.

All you had to do was follow two simple rules. One: you paid whatever amount he asked for in cash up front, no arguing about the price. If you were high enough up the wanted list to need his services than you were too high up to quibble over dollars and cents and risk him tossing you out and forcing you to find a real hospital. Second: you never told _anyone_ about the shady side of his practice. If a friend was hurt you could call him up and ask him to consider offering them his services, but the first time he treated a new patient it would be by his own choice alone once he'd decided that there was no chance at all you were a mole for the side of good or stupid enough to ever let his name slip. Even within groups he'd pick and choose who he'd offer his services to; Big Billy hadn't been allowed to know about him for years, until the mess with Sedusa had finally convinced the doctor that he knew how to keep his mouth shut when it was important enough.

The secrecy had worked out well for him. In the dozen years since the Powerpuff Girls had been created they'd never once heard even a whisper of his name as far as anyone in the criminal underworld could tell. The secret side of his business had flourished over the years, while the lawful side of Townsville just saw his small legitimate practice

He was the only doctor that Ace would trust with this.

Ace had told him outright when he'd called that he'd picked him because he was discreet, not because there was anything illegal going on, but he knew he still wouldn't be happy when he saw who the patient they'd called him in for was. Sure enough, as soon as he laid eyes on her he looked apoplectic with anger, though anybody who didn't know him would never be able to tell. He wasn't the type of person who flew into red-faced rages when he was pissed, instead he went very, very quiet and stiff. All the blood seemed to drain out of him and his features tightened, making his already overly-thin face look positively skull-like. He was a guy who always looked more like someone's mental image of a mortician than a doctor to begin with, but when he got mad he started to look more like The Cryptkeeper than anything else.

"Mr. Copular," he said in a voice so cold it put Blossom's ice breath to shame, "I believe that you must have forgotten the terms to our arrangement."

"And it sounds like _you_ forgot we're good, law-abiding citizens now, Doc, so any arrangements you've got with people who _aren't_ don't really apply," Ace said with a smirk, leaning back against the door so Marten couldn't just walk out. He knew it was a risky gamble, but it wasn't like he had much to lose. Sure, being able to get quickly and quietly patched up came in useful sometimes even now that they could visit normal doctors without worrying about it, but since he and the gang had no plans of slipping back into their old ways it wasn't like they'd be missing out on much if they were put permanently on his shitlist. "Look, there ain't nothing to worry about here. She wakes up while you're here, I just say I figured a doctor from the city would know a little less jack-squat about how her body works than one from around here, and you were the first doctor from Townsville I could get a hold of who agreed to drive out here. She doesn't wake up 'til you're gone, we never mention you at all. But if you just walk outta here without even checking her out then you just lost all the cash you spent on gas getting out here and you don't earn a dime."

Doctor Marten's face tightened just a little further. "I'll think you'll find, Mr. Copular, that this is precisely the type of situation which hospitals were invented to remedy."

"No way in hell are me or any of my boys gonna be the one to walk her into a hospital, so unless _you_ wanna be the one explaining why you're carrying around a beaten Powerpuff Girl it ain't gonna happen. C'mon now, Doc, just get on with it. Don't you have doctors have that Hypocrite Oath thing telling you you've gotta anyway?"

"I feel that the Hippocratic oath is more of a quaint tradition than a binding oath." Still, he finally sat his bag of supplies beside the cot they'd tossed her on and regarded Ace with narrowed eyes. "I trust that you realize my fee will be increased by a _substantial_ amount due to the nature of the client."

"Yeah, yeah. I'll send Arturo off to the nearest ATM." It didn't worry Ace too much. Doctor Marten always knew the precise amount of funds available to his chosen clients to an almost worryingly exact degree. He wouldn't charge more than you had, or at least could reasonably get your hands on before he reached you, and he'd leave you enough for a couple of weeks worth of groceries and your next month's rent if you lived in a place you needed to pay for. He knew that leaving patients starving and homeless wouldn't lead to much repeat business, so Ace knew that whatever he asked for they're be able to cover.

The price Dr. Marten noted down for him to pass on to Arturo practically made his eyes bulge out behind his shades anyway. They could cover it, yeah, but just barely. The doc really _was_ pissed off, and it was a damned good thing that they wouldn't be getting paid for the fair gig until after their last show so he didn't know to try sucking that cash out of them too.

"And have that brute of yours carry in the boxes in the backseat of my car, you should know the ones," Dr. Marten said, already bowing over Buttercup like he knew for a fact that Ace was telling the truth when he said they'd pay, and, hell, it _was_ nice to have _someone_ show them a little bit of trust for a change. "I believe I'll need a few of my special instruments for this case."

"Yeah, sure, I'll make sure he grabs the right things. Just wait here a minute." He left the trailer and found the guys hanging around outside it, looking too obviously worried considering that he'd told them to play it cool.

Snake slunk up to him as he closed the door to the trailer behind him. "Are you sssssure about thisss, Ace?" he hissed quietly.

"Positive. Trust me, guys; I know what I'm doing here." He tossed the paper with Marten's price to Arturo. "You find an ATM, get him the rest of the money he wants. Big Billy, you're with me."

Arturo peeked at the number on the paper, then gave a low whistle. "Ay, Ace, you really think we can afford this?"

"I _just said_ to trust me. I've got a plan here--one that ain't illegal at all, so don't start lookin' at me like that--and I guaran_tee_ you that taking the hit to our bank account now will pay off before too long."

Grubber blew a raspberry, and Ace nodded to him.

"Exactly what I was thinking. Just as soon as she wakes up and can keep any unfortunate _misunderstandings_ from getting started those girls will owe us so big time that nobody'll ever question our motives again. Some snooty-assed club owner gets up on his high horse about how he won't hire 'criminals' to play, and what do we tell him? 'Well, before you decide why don't you just call up our references, _The Powerpuff Girls_,' and the next thing you know they'll be scrambling to hire us! There ain't _nobody_ who's gonna turn down a group those girls okayed."

Ace found it a little depressing how long it took for that to sink into their heads before Arturo finally started to laugh. "Great plan, Ace! I never would have thought of that!"

"Obviously not," Ace said dryly, then turned towards the parking lot. "All right, get to work! Billy, get over here."

Although Dr. Marten's first rule specified cash, the real fact of the matter was that he didn't _always_ ask for money as his payment. With all the best magical beings, mad scientists, and outright thieves in Townsville on his patient list, from time to time he'd think of something he wanted from them more than money. Ace didn't know much about what all he'd gotten over time--when crooks got together they were fine with bitching about how much cash using him had cost them, but they were a lot more closed mouth about anything else he asked for so word wouldn't start to spread about any thefts they actually managed to get away with or doodads they'd invented but weren't ready to reveal elsewhere yet--but there were a few things everyone who came to him in a bad enough shape knew about. The boxes.

The most common rumor was that Mojo Jojo must've been the one to create the devices held in them. There weren't any obvious signs of his handiwork on them, but there weren't many scientists with the brains needed to invent the things who got pounded on by the Powerpuff Girls on a regular basis, was threatening enough to keep someone as focused on dollars and cents as the Doctor from dragging the things down to the patent office to make a mint off his work, _and_ was proud enough of his evil reputation not to do the patenting himself. Even fewer who, besides all that, had been active for _years_; Dr. Marten had gotten the first of his special tools back when Ace was still just an idiot teenager, and new ones showed up from time to time as he thought of other things he wanted for the entire time he'd been the Gang's main physician.

The contents of the boxes were the machines of his trade that wouldn't usually be found in the office of a guy who was supposed to be an old-fashioned family doctor. Machines for taking X-rays, MRIs, ultrasounds, any kind of test that might be needed to accurately assess the damage done to his patients that they'd normally need to be sent off to hospitals or specialists to get done, all shrunk down to a remarkably small and portable form. Ace didn't even know if it would be possible for someone to cart one of the creepy MRI tubes he saw on TV right to somebody's house, but the doctor had one that collapsed down to a small cube and popped back out into full form with the press of a button, so neatly travel sized that it and a few other machines all fit into the cardboard boxes they were kept in together.

Boxes which were pretty damned heavy, so it was a good thing Big Billy was there. Ace _could_ lug the things in one at a time if he really needed to, they weighed a lot but not the ton that they reasonably should, but he'd rather let Billy use his freakish strength and save himself the effort.

"Okay, Billy, let's get these back to Doc Marten and see what he can do."

o 0 O 0 o

'What he could do' turned out to be mostly hemming and hawing and repeatedly telling Ace that he couldn't be _entirely_ sure of what he was seeing without more time to study her, because apparently the internal structure of someone made up of rainbows and gumdrops wasn't exactly the same as other people's even with the strange sorts he got as some of his patients. Big shocker there.

The diagnoses he came up with were peppered with five dollar words; contusion, concussion, possibly other intracranial injury. Finally he'd practically shrugged it off, not exactly the display of doctorly professionalism Ace would've hoped for. "There are no broken bones, no obviously deathly serious injuries. The length of time Miss. Utomium has remained unconscious is very worrying, but I'm unable to find signs of the type of trauma I would expect it to indicate in a regular human girl within her unique physiology. Frankly, for all I can tell these girls might naturally fall into healing comas upon taking enough damage, and they've simply managed to hide the fact from anyone who might use it against them until now. If I stayed long enough to judge her state upon waking I would be able to form a more solid idea of how much or how little damage has been done, but I'm afraid that I have _no_ intention of remaining long enough for her to see me. You'll have to judge for yourself her mental state when she wakes; if anything seems wrong I suggest taking her to a hospital, or showing the good sense to contact the man who _created_ her and might actually have some concept of how her body functions."

"Hey, we ain't idiots!" Ace had protested. "First thing I did after dropping her here was look up 'Utonium' in the phonebook and give 'em a call, but the answering machine said they're off on vacation, and we aren't what you'd call high on their list of people to give their cell number to."

"The hospital then. I find it difficult to believe that it will be necessary, given the amount of damage I've seen these children survive in the past without showing any lasting effects, but then until I saw her today I would have said that I doubted anything but sleep could render them unconscious for any extended amount of time." He'd gathered what supplies Big Billy hadn't already carted back to the car and began to leave, but paused at the door. "And, Mr. Copular? I would hope this goes without saying, but in case it doesn't; _never_ attempt to seek out my services again."

That left Ace where he was now, leaning back in a folding chair with his feet kicked up on a table as he waited for her to wake up already. She was finally starting to show signs of stirring, hours after he'd first spotted her in the water. It was a good thing she was finally getting around to it--much longer and he'd have had to leave to start the night's show--but she was taking her own sweet time about finally coming to. She'd first started to twitch almost half-an-hour before and still hadn't cracked open her eyes.

Bored of waiting, he decided that he might as well have some fun with her. He let his chair thump to the ground and tossed himself to his feet. He shifted around for a minute, trying to determine the best spot to settle, and ultimately opted for leaning against the wall right at the end of her cot. Once there he crossed his arms over his chest and plastered his best evil smirk on his face, perfected over years of practice as a hoodlum.

Okay, so maybe messing with her a little wasn't the _best_ way to start getting her to realize how much she owed him, and maybe there was a pretty good chance that her first reaction to seeing him looking sinister would be to punch his teeth in, but if she did what he hoped for instead and was too confused by his apparent sudden shift in character after years spent convincing the girls to back the hell off to take action the look on her face would be _hilarious_.

And he hadn't exactly gotten many laughs that day.

Finally, _finally_, her eyes started to flutter open. His smirk widened a twitch, showing just a little more fang, and in a sinister tone of voice he said, "Well well well, look what the cat dragged in."

Her eyes flew open the rest of the way and she jerked her head up so she could look at him.

And then she screamed at the top of her lungs.

His eyebrows shot up, and he blinked at her from behind his glasses. _Not_ the reaction he'd expected from her. _Maybe_ from Bubbles, though he wouldn't bet money on it, but not from Buttercup.

But he didn't give up his game quite yet. "Hey, quiet down Kid. Is that anyway to greet an old pal? Tsk. Tsk."

She swallowed hard, staring at him with wide eyes, then stammered out, "Y-y-yo-y-y-y-you're...you're _green!_" like she never seen anything like it before in her life.

It was his turn to stare. "...Wait, _what?_" 


	5. I'm Just Keeping An Eye

Ace'd had to get out of there, once he was _sure_ that she really was messed up in the head and hadn't just figured out that he was trying to freak her out and decided to josh with him in return. It was too _big_ for him to deal with on the fly. He needed time to think about the right way to deal with the situation, if a right way even existed.

Luckily that night's show gave him a perfect excuse to scram for awhile, especially since he really did need to get started on it. Okay, maybe leaving someone with their memories scrambled wasn't the brightest idea in the world, but it wasn't like anything they had laying around the trailer was going to hurt _her_ unless having her memory missing made her suddenly think chugging Liquid Plumber would be a good idea. And he wouldn't bet on even that doing anything to her, though considering that he also wouldn't have bet on ever seeing her as beat up as she was that day or on anything being able to bash her in the head hard enough to knock the memories out of her noggin maybe he'd hold off on ever making that one.

They ended up changing up that night's set list at the last minute, coming up with what they'd play right as they were walking towards the stage. That kind of sucked-they'd wanted to go out with a bang on their last night, introduce a few new songs to get their fans chattering-but if he was gonna brainstorm while he played than they needed to stick with the well-practiced old songs his hands knew so well that his brain didn't even need to check in on them to make sure they'd be played well. It turned out just fine anyway, the crowd cheering and calling for encores just as loudly as they could want.

He didn't stop thinking until they were backstage and ready to head back to the trailer. "Guys," he said, staring off into space, "About how long would you guess her memory's likely to stay gone for?"

There was a buzzing of conversation behind him while he went on staring at nothing before L'il Arturo offered, "I dunno, Ace; on TV don't it always happen when they get bonked on the head again?"

"_Exactly_ what I was thinkin'," Ace said with a grin, pleased as punch with the answer. And what were the chances that anything would ever be able to conk her in the noggin hard enough to rattle her brains around again? The fact that it had happened once could just about count as a miracle, except that Ace was pretty sure that the word didn't apply when it was bad crap happening. The point was that she was made out of the strongest stuff the world had ever known, and, unless whatever had worked her over to begin with came back for a second shot and hadn't just gotten lucky with the first one, chances were that if it took a hit that strong to cure her than her memory would be gone for good. And he could work with that.

"All right boys, new plan," he went on. "Snake, go grab our pay; we're gonna need to get out of here ASAP once I'm done having a chat with the girl. The rest of you stay out here for now, and once I let you back in the trailer just keep cool and go along with whatever I've worked out with her. _Don't_ freak out, and that goes double for you Snake; I swear to God you're gonna have to hitchhike to our next stop if you start shriekin' the way you did the last time she was hanging around us."

Snake actually looked insulted at that, like spending a few hours around her had never been enough to make him snap like a twig. "I'm fine. She'ssss got no reason to sssstart hitting now."

"Great, then scram. I gave you a job to do, and I've gotta start working on mine."

The thing about the girls, the _important_ thing for his purposes though the superstrength and all that might come in handy too, was that they practically had charisma oozing out their ears. It, as much as the way they took down every monster that even looked vaguely threateningly towards Townsville, was what had earned them the unending adoration of the people of the city, and was what kept it from fading even when they made bigger messes of the city than usual in the course of their duties. And charisma like that, well, it was the one thing the band seriously needed.

Ace had it, no point in being modest about it; that was what had let him win her over years before even if it had only lasted for a little while. Snake could fake it when he tried, but as soon as he opened his mouth he lost all but a select type of individuals who weren't creeped out by the forked tongue and the way he hissed like his namesake. But Arturo? Big Billy? _Grubber?_ They just didn't have it, Arturo even losing the girls who'd used to coo over how they had a little boy in the band once he hit puberty and the 'L'il' nickname suddenly started to seem like it was supposed to be ironic.

If they could get her charisma on _their_ side, not just giving her okay from a distance the way he'd originally planned but actually staying among them, it could only mean good things for the group. Give her a quick makeover so her face wouldn't be so obvious to anyone who'd ever picked up a newspaper, give her some job-in-name-only that would make her associated with the band in the eyes of others (assistant manager maybe; nobody outside of the band needed to know that Ace himself was the closest thing to a manager that they had) or even just convince her to be a groupie then people would start flocking to see what kind of band could grab the loyalty of this girl who could make just about anybody feel drawn to her with nothing more than a look and a grin.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly _good_ of him to plot out squirreling her away from her family so he could use her amnesia for his own benefit. Maybe it wasn't exactly the type of thing a gang who'd turned over a new leaf oughta be doing. But it wasn't like they were gonna _hurt_ her. Hell, it was exactly the opposite! Ace would personally make sure that she was carefully taken care of until she all healed up, and once she was up and about again they'd treat her just like a member of the gang.

If she ever got her memory back they'd let her go right back to her family, wasn't like they'd be able to stop her anyway. And if she didn't, well... the girl she'd been was dead, gone with her memories of her family and friends and all her heroics. Was it really _bad_ if he let her family think that her body was dead too? It wasn't like they wouldn't be miserable if they had her body hanging around with a person who didn't know them inside of it.

He knew that explanation wouldn't actually hold water with the other two 'puffs and their professor if they ever found out what he'd done, but whatever. It was enough justification for _him_.

He half expected that all his plotting would be for nothing and he'd get back to find a giant gaping hole in the roof of the trailer where she'd flown out, but as soon as he got close enough to spot it he could see that it was still completely whole and when he opened up the door there she was. She wasn't lying down anymore, though she still looked banged up enough that he bet she should be; her body might be good at healing itself but apparently even she couldn't shrug off wounds that bad in just an hour and change.

She was in front of the cabinets they stored their dishes in, standing up on her tip-toes and hovering an inch above the floor besides. He'd never really noticed before just how short she'd stayed even after puberty had worked its magic on her, height being kind of hard to judge when you only ever saw someone flying at least ten feet overhead and when they'd been such a dinky thing before their growth spurt that even 'short' meant that they'd put on a good few feet. But it suddenly became completely obvious seeing her trying and failing to reach the cups they kept shoved in the back of the top shelf, kept out of the way since he and the boys usually just chugged whatever they wanted to drink straight out of the jug, bottle, or can. It was a _big_ trailer that they'd saved up for ages to buy so they'd have a home they could take on the road with them, more of an RV really except that Ace thought 'trailer' sounded more like the thing a rags-to-hopefully-eventually-riches band should be living out of, but he'd never brought in anyone who'd had any problems reaching all the shelves. He wondered why the hell she didn't just fly a little higher.

The question was answered when she whirled around at the sound of him coming in, her whole face twisted with frustration, and said, "I should be able to get higher than this, I _know_ it!"

"Yeah, you oughta," he agreed, raising his eyebrows at her. He walked over and hooked the toe of one of his sneakers into the gap beneath her heel to see if a nudge would send her drifting higher, but all that happened was she wobbled slightly then settled back where she'd been. "Now that's... weird," he said. Weird, interesting, worth a freaking _ton_ of cash if he was still a bad enough guy to let the right person know her powers were on the fritz. Which he wasn't. But she sure was giving him loads of temptation to slip from the straight and narrow that day.

Sure did explain a thing or two about how she'd gotten so screwed up, though. "Get your ass back in bed," he told her as he reached over her head to grab a cup, keeping those thoughts to himself. It was time to act concerned. "No wonder you can't hardly get your feet off the ground; you shouldn't be on 'em to begin with. Soda good, or do you want water?"

She retreated to the bed like he'd told her to, though she eyeballed him warily the entire way. From how heavily she plopped down on the edge of it, like her knees had buckled the instant she'd given them half-a-chance to, he guessed that he'd been right when he'd said she shouldn't be up. "I wanted to get milk," she said, curling up on her side to keep her eyes on him.

"Unless you wanna wait for coffee to brew, I offered what we got. So, _soda_ or _water_?" All right, so there was booze too, but he wasn't wasting that on a, what was she now? Seventeen? Sixteen? Well, he wasn't wasting it on a teen, however many years-old she was exactly. And, okay, he _could_ have yelled out to one of the guys to go hunting through the fair for a booth that sold milk, but he wanted to be out of there before Blossom or Bubbles showed up to look for their sister and that meant he didn't want to risk having to waste time waiting for them to get back. Who knew how long it would take them to find somewhere that had more than the fair standard drinks of exactly the same thing he was offering her plus lemonade?

"Okay... water," she decided, and frowned at him as he went about getting it for her. "You're still green."

"Doesn't exactly wipe off, kid," he told her, giving her her drink. He stood there awkwardly for a few moments after she'd taken it, not exactly sure what he should be doing with himself while hanging around talking to an old enemy who didn't know him from Adam, but in the end he perched himself on the edge of her cot. If he was gonna try to pull off a concerned friend act then he really needed to sell it.

"But people aren't _normally_ green... are they? I-I mean, _I'm_ not, and I don't feel like I'm weird, and if feels like _you_ are, but I don't..." As she spoke the frustrated look came back to her face, becoming more and more obvious the longer she went on.

Finally he took pity on her and cut in. "Yeah, yeah, it ain't normal. But, seriously kid, you've known me since you were in elementary school. So hows about at least _pretending_ you remember you got over that years ago, before you start to give me some sorta complex?" After a moment's hesitation she nodded, and he moved on to more important things. "Okay, so you remember you can fly, and that you should be able to do it higher. You remember that I look kinda... _unusual_, but not who I am. You remember what milk is, what cups are, and that you oughta be able to find them in a cupboard. How 'bout where we're from, you remember that?" She shook her head, and went on shaking it as he kept going. "Remember your job? Anything about family? How you got so banged up? D'you even remember _you_!"

At that she burst out, "Of course I know me! I'm a girl, I-I... like swimming?" She plucked at the edge of the swimsuit she was wearing, frowning, then suddenly curled one hand into a fist and punched her other palm. "And I'm tough! When something upsets me it makes me want to find something to hit!"

He raised an eyebrow at her. "Yeah! You know that because you remember it, or 'cause you wanna hit somethin' right now?" She didn't need to say a word to get her answer across; the way she blushed and looked away from him said it all. "But I was talking about more, y'know, factual type stuff. Name, age, all that garbage."

Slowly she shook her head one last time, then scowled up at him with a look so familiar it made him instinctively brace himself for a hit that never came. "I don't even know _your_ name yet."

"That one's easy enough to fix. The name's Ace, and _you're_ Bu-" He cut himself off suddenly, all at once realizing that 'Buttercup' was an unusual enough name that if she went around calling herself that _someone_ was gonna put two and two together no matter how well they tried to disguise her.

"My name's Buh?" she asked, apparently not noticing that he was suddenly busy thinking.

"What? Oh, no! No, I just, uh, I just realized I was about to call you... by your nickname! That's right, your nickname. But you'd rather know your whole name first, right?" He rubbed the back of his head, hoping that explanation didn't sound as awkward to her ear as it had felt coming out of his mouth. At least it gave him more time to think up a name. Something that would fit in nicely with the gang. Something for a chick, but tougher than the flower name she had. Or at least a flower that was _dangerous_, something toxic, something like... "You're Belladonna. Bell or Bella for short. And a few assholes call you Donna, but, pssh, that's more like a name for a secretary, right?" he breezed, trying to cover up his momentary misstep with an overload of information.

"Belladonna..." she repeated slowly, feeling out the word in her mouth. "That's nice."

"Good you think so, since you're gonna need to get used to it." And so would he and the boys, but maybe that'd turn out to be a good thing. If they got used to thinking of her as Belladonna, that girl they had hanging around, instead of as Buttercup the Powerpuff Girl, it was less likely anyone'd accidentally let something slip. Names taken care of, he decided that it was finally time to ease into the important part of the conversation. "Well, if your brain's so screwed up you can't even remember your own name you _obviously_ shouldn't be left on your own. And since there's nobody else who'd do it-"

"_Nobody?_" she cut him off, looking so stricken at this new piece of information that for just an instant he actually felt guilty enough to consider calling the whole plan off.

But, no. He was already in too deep for that. "Uh, it's not the type of thing you usually throw on friends anyway, right?" he amended, so at least it didn't sound like she was completely alone in the world anymore. "But we're doing pretty well now, and I kinda feel responsible since I _am_ the one who dragged you out of the water, so how about sticking with us for awhile? Just until your memory starts coming back, of course."

She was silent for a long while, long enough that he was starting to think that she was trying to remember a polite way to say 'shove off', before she finally quietly said, "The water... I remember that. It was everywhere, and I knew I _should_ be able to get out but I just couldn't no matter how hard I tried." She looked straight at him, making him feel like she was staring straight through his sunglasses to meet his eyes. Heck, maybe one of her powers let her do just that; it wasn't like they couldn't do some other seriously random things. "You're the one who got me out of there?"

"How'd you think you wound up here?" he asked with a shrug.

"I guess I didn't think about it. I... okay. If it's fine by you I'll stay. Just until I remember somewhere better to be. Just don't let me near that much water again, all right?"

"Kid, I promise that where we're headin' you won't ever even see a kiddie pool unless you go searching for it. Now you just wait here, I'll go grab the rest of the guys for introductions, and we'll get moving." He pushed himself off the edge of the cot and left the trailer, walking out to where the rest of the gang was waiting around for him. Even Snake was back from picking up there pay, he was glad to see. "Okay boys, small change of plans! We ain't heading home, we're going to the one place on Earth where they don't know squat about the Powerpuff Girls and where Bubbles and Blossom won't _ever_ fly in looking for their sister. We're going to Citiesville."

* * *

**Note:** I'm aware that Powerpuff Girls Doujinshi has a fairly popular Powerpuff OC named Bell, so apologies in advance if it causes any momentary confusion when people call Buttercup that in the future (though it shouldn't actually happen often; if they never tried to shorten 'Buttercup' I think they can handle 'Belladonna'), but the name's right from FusionFall and I wasn't going to mess with her sorta-kinda canonical rename even if the story isn't directly FusionFall based. Thanks for understanding, and for reading! 


	6. Take It All In

It was a very silent drive. When Ace's friends got into the trailer Belladonna's first instinct was to huddle into a ball to try and escape the way they were staring at her. It was too much, being surrounded by strangers who apparently _weren't_ strangers except that every time she tried to remember anything about them she just found more blank places in her already depressingly empty mind.

But that first instinct was quickly drowned out by an even stronger impulse, this one coming from the same place within her that was _sure_ she could do more than just float a tiny bit above the ground and that shook with anger at how helpless she felt. That part of her said that there was _no way_ she'd let herself curl up like a baby trying to hide from nightmares. That she was _not_ going to be afraid of a bunch of guys who seemed to be completely harmless now that she'd gotten over the 'green' thing. It forced her to sit up straight on her cot and stare boldly back at them, even though being upright for too long made her vision swim and her head throb.

For their parts, the guys didn't seem interested in trying to chat with her. They-at least the ones who'd stayed in the back with her, the enormous one having gone to ride shotgun while Ace drove them to wherever they were going-mostly just looked freaked out at her being there. Ace had explained it before he left her; "Eh, they're okay guys but they ain't the brainiest bunch. Give 'em a couple hours, they'll work out they can keep treatin' ya normal even though you got your head bashed in."

But that worked out just fine for her, really. If they didn't want to talk then she didn't feel like she needed to bother chatting either, and there were more important things to do. She could focus on trying to remember, to remember _anything_, instead.

It was so weird, because there were so many things that she _did_ remember, or maybe it was more like she just knew them without feeling like her memory was even really getting involved. When she'd looked out the window as they drove she'd known what she would see there, in general at least even if she didn't know exactly where they were. The cloudy blue sky hadn't surprised her, or the smaller cars around them, or the pavement flying by beneath them. Catching a glimpse of water sparkling in the distance had made her choke down a cry and whip her head around to look at the wall for awhile instead, but it wasn't like she hadn't known that the ocean must still be _somewhere_ around them. She recognized things around her too. When she spotted a little portable TV stuck in the corner she could even come up with the types of shows she was sure would be interesting, though any specific titles escaped her.

She wasn't _totally_ sure, since it wasn't like she could remember she'd forgotten something until something else reminded her that she didn't know something she should, but it seemed like the main thing missing in her mind was _people_. Herself most of all.

She hadn't known her name until Ace gave it to her. She didn't know where she was from, or who she knew there. She didn't know if she had any family who might be worried about her and want to know she was okay, but she guessed she must not if Ace was taking her in because there was no one else to turn to. She didn't know how old she was. She had no idea if she had any means of paying Ace back for his help. And it looked like it was summer so she guessed it wouldn't be a big deal for awhile, but she didn't know if she should be in school, or had already graduated, or if she was a drop out.

All that information was kept in a part of her mind that now seemed dark and brittle when she tried to get into it, the edges of the darkness sharp enough to send stabbing pain through her head whenever she tried to get into it.

Finally, once she felt like she'd given herself the migraine to end all migraines, she just let it go. When you were injured you healed eventually, right? But if you picked at the wound it took longer, didn't it? So if she wanted to heal quickly she should try leaving it alone. Okay, so she didn't know if it actually worked that way, but it made sense to her and at least it was something she could _do_. Being able to tell herself that she was doing anything at all that might help, even if what she was doing was nothing, made her feel a little better.

And, hey, at least she'd been lucky enough to end up among friends. She could easily have ended up washing up somewhere surrounded by strangers who couldn't even tell her things about herself secondhand. Or, though she really didn't like to think about it, she could have died in those waves without ever having a chance to find out who she was again or even having realized that she'd lost herself.

Since she was that lucky she guessed that she really should make an effort to get to know the guys, or reknow them, or whatever it should be called. With her head throbbing the way it was she didn't actually feel much like talking, but even with that in the way it would probably be easier for her to get a conversation going than it would be for one of them to do it. To her it would be like she was just trying to learn about some new people, without the strangeness of someone she knew acting like she was a complete stranger that they needed to deal with.

"So, um," she started, then blinked at the way they jumped in their seats at the words. "Uh... sorry about all this. The not recognizing you thing."

She was greeted by a chorus of "No, no"s, combined with several emphatic raspberries.

"Don't even feel like you've gotta try to remember, s guys?" Arturo added.

"Ssssssseriously," Snake said.

Belladonna was a little surprised at how sincere they managed to make that sound when obviously they must just be trying to keep her from feeling bad about not knowing them. "Okay, thanks," she said, then cast around for anything else they could talk about to fill the time. Her eyes fell on their instrument cases and gave her a topic. "So, you guys are in a band?"

That seemed to be the right choice. Their eyes lit up and suddenly they seemed to have loads of things to discuss, shows and songs and what a big deal the fair was to them and how long they'd been working towards their big break. She leaned back on her cot and let them talk, hoping that maybe if she just listened long enough maybe it would all start to feel familiar. 


	7. Missing Pieces

A full day had passed and they hadn't found a thing. Blossom and Bubbles hadn't been able to find so much as a strand of Buttercup's hair or a scrap of her swimsuit to give them a sign of which way to look. It was completely horrible in every single way; the sisters had _never_ gone that long without seeing each other before in their lives, even if it was just for a few minutes after waking up or before they went to bed. And even if things kept them scattered across the city all day long they could always at least hear each other from anywhere in Townsville, their voices standing out distinctly to each other even above all the screams and cries for help that they usually used their superhearing to pick out.

They had finally accepted the fact that trying to find Buttercup on their own while the Professor waited back at their cabin in case she showed up on her own just wasn't working. It was hard for them to admit it to themselves-they were _heroes_, they'd saved the day more times than they could even remember, so how could they fail their own sister?-but they needed all the help they could get, be it from the AWSM, the police, the coast guard, anyone who could help them cover more ground.

The obvious first step was to head back to Townsville, where the Mayor could use his mayorly authority to get the police and coast guard parts of that needed help rolling. But, Blossom realized as she watched Bubbles and the Mayor clinging to each other and sobbing, the obvious step probably hadn't actually been the best one.

Bubbles had held up admirably well until then. People who only knew her by her reputation as the most tender-hearted of the girls probably would have expected her to start crying hours before. Instead she'd remained as composed as it was possible to be in the circumstances right up until they started telling the story of what had happened to the Mayor. She'd been a hero more than long enough to understand that there were times that you just _couldn't_ crack, even if it was personal.

Maybe _especially_ if it was personal.

But once the Mayor, always bad at controlling himself, had started tearing up that had been it for her. It had started with just a watery brightness in her eyes and faint quaver in her voice as she'd gone over her part of the search. But when he'd seen that a sob had broken out when until then he'd managed to hold back all but a few tears, at it she'd started to sniffle, and from there it quickly became a downward spiral of them both feeding off each others grief until anyone who saw them would probably think that someone had remade the Miser-Ray.

Blossom stood awkwardly by, a good part of her wanting to join them even though she knew that what she should really be doing was trying to get them to pull themselves together. At the same time the thought of making them stop felt terrible to her. Her sister was _missing_-maybe worse than missing, though she couldn't even bring herself to think the word for what 'worse' could mean-and even if she was the leader and supposed to keep everyone on task, how could she tell them to stop grieving that?

She was saved from having to decide by a gentle hand on her shoulder, and when she looked up it was into Ms. Bellum's sympathetic face. "I'll start making calls and watch over these two for you, Blossom. You don't need to worry about things here if there's anything else that you need to take care of."

At least that was one less thing to worry about, although the worries still left were so overwhelmingly huge that it wasn't really enough to relax her at all. "Thanks, Ms. Bellum."

"If you think of anything else we could do to help, all you need to do is ask," she said, giving Blossom's shoulder a comforting squeeze before dropping her hand. "Would you like me to get in touch with the news too? It wouldn't be long before the entire city was helping you look for her."

Blossom hesitated, turning the idea over in her head, then slowly shook her head. Thousands of extra eyes _were_ incredibly tempting, but... "No. We should keep this as quiet as possible, only let people who are trained to handle this kind of thing know what's happening. The minute word gets out villains are going to start trying to take advantage of what's happening, and we can't let that happen while it's still possible that we might find her soon. If there's still been now sign of her in a few days, then we'll go to the news."

"Of course. I can't believe I didn't think of it myself. This situation is so unbelievable that it's hard to think clearly about it," Ms. Bellum said, touching her forehead like she might be able to physically brush the cobwebs out of her mind. "How is your father dealing with it?"

Blossom ducked her head, trying to hide the guilt that she was sure showed on him. "We... haven't really had the chance to find out how he's dealing with it. We did tell him! And we saw him again when we let him know we were coming here. But..."

"But you couldn't spare much time that would be better spent looking for Buttercup?"

Blossom nodded, grateful to her for understanding. "He decided that he'd stay at the cabin while we're trying to find her, in case she comes back on her own. We have it for another six days, and if she's still gone then..." ...it was safe to assume that she'd never be back to the cabin, but Blossom couldn't bring herself to say it.

"Would you give me directions there? Maybe once I'm done here I'll drive out. He shouldn't be alone at a time like this." She pressed her lips together, glancing over at where the Mayor and Bubbles were still busy weeping, and added, "I wouldn't usually consider leaving the Mayor alone for so long, but Buttercup vanishing is important enough to hold his attention and keep him from doing anything too destructive."

"You'd do that? _Thank you._ We felt awful leaving him by himself like this!"

"You don't need to thank me, Blossom. We've all known each other for how many years now? Of course I'll go." She sat down at the Mayor's desk, pulling the normal, non-hotline, phone towards her to begin the job she'd promised to do, then glanced up at Blossom one last time. "What do you plan to do now."

"I need to go see the AWSM soon, but I have one more thing to do in Townsville first." Her hands curled into tight fists at her side, a clear note of rage entering her voice as she said, "I need to see Mojo Jojo."

o 0 O 0 o

It had been years since the last time any of the girls had burst through a roof, unless it belonged to a villain or they were in the middle of such a huge emergency that they couldn't spare even the few extra seconds it took to go through the door. And even in those emergencies they now tried aiming for windows, so repairs would be cheaper and easier for the people who needed to make them. When they'd gotten old enough to really understand the value of a dollar and how much effort construction took for people who didn't have superpowers they had realized that just because they _could_ plow straight into the middle of the crime scene it didn't mean that they _should_.

Bank owners and businessmen all over Townsville heaved sighs of relief after they decided that, even as construction workers and repairmen bitterly watched the amount of work they got plummeted. The number of attacks on the town still kept its shockingly large construction industry going, but it would never again be as steady as it had been back in the days when the girls had innocently sown casual destruction wherever they went.

Which was why the guard outside of Mojo's solitary cell jumped and cowered back against the wall when Blossom slammed through the ceiling with such force that hunks of it continued to crack off and fall in her wake for several seconds. Back when she was a little girl he would have recognized the sound for what it was at once, but it had been so long that he thought it was an attack on the jail until he spotted her distinctive bow and ponytail through the small window on the cell door.

"What was that weapon you used on Buttercup yesterday?" she spat out, so much anger in her voice that it was almost unrecognizable. "Talk."

Though Mojo himself had also been startled by her sudden entrance he hid it well. By the time she'd finished asking her question he'd already composed himself enough to answer with a menacing laugh instead of anything at all helpful.

It was the first time since she was only a few weeks old and hearing it coming from a person that she'd trusted implicitly that one of his evil laughs actually frightened her, though on the surface in only made her seem angrier. "I said _talk_," she snapped, shooting forward a few inches only to stop just as suddenly while she was still several feet away from him. Her entire body shook with the strain of resisting the urge to plow right into him, but she did it. She wouldn't risk let him turn her into a murderer. She wouldn't. She wouldn't. Buttercup would never want that to happen for her sake. "I swear to God, Mojo, don't make me rough you up to get answers. Because right now I don't think I'd be able to stop."

"Ah, Blossom," he said, by all appearances perfectly calm in spite of the threat. "Maybe this will finally teach you an important lesson about letting a person speak. It is rude, impolite, and, above all, _bad-mannered_, especially with punching and hitting and the breaking of very expensive robots. If you had listened to the _important_ and informative words which had been coming out of my mouth, maybe then you would have understood the-"

"_Mojo!_"

He glared at her for interrupting again, but before long his mouth curved into a cruel smile, far too many of his sharp teeth showing. "Poor, poor little Buttercup," he said, his voice a mocking parody of concern. "You know, I've spent the last day thinking about the results of out battle, turning it over in my head and pondering what went wrong and what went very _very_ right, and the more I thought the more I _knew_ that you would be here before long although I also thought that your other sister would be with you which is one mistake in my thinking but _not_, I think, as bad a mistake as yours."

"_What_ mistake? Will you get to the point already?" Blossom realized that in her rage she was starting to sound more like Buttercup than herself, but rather than calm her down at all the reminder of her sister only made the feelings stronger.

"To reiterate, I will restate again the mistake I have already mentioned in the lesson you were meant to have learned. If you and Bubbles had not so rudely interrupted me maybe there was a chance you would have understood how much danger Buttercup was in while there was still time to do something about it. But now there is _no longer_ that time, and it being too late I will gladly tell you what your interrupting has done." His smile grew even wider. "Buttercup was thrown out into the ocean, correct? No problem for a Powerpuff Girl, yes? Unless, of course, that Powerpuff Girl was hit by my _Powerpuff Weakening Ray_. Why, after that she would not be able to fly back to shore, or swim super-fast without getting tired, or use super-vision or super-hearing to figure out which way to go, or _survive without oxygen._" Again that mocking pity entered his voice. "Poor Buttercup. I've heard that drowning is a terrible way to die."

He laughed again, the wicked sound of it filling the room, but this time Blossom barely noticed it at all. She dropped out of the air like a stone, the poured cement floor cracking under her feet like it was made of eggshell when she landed, but she didn't notice that either. She was too preoccupied with the way the anger that had filled her had suddenly vanished under a flood of icy terror, her mind still caught in the moment when Mojo had said the word that until that moment she'd refused to even think in the privacy of her own mind.

She wouldn't stop searching once she left the prison.

She couldn't let herself believe that it was true.

She had to remind herself that it wasn't like Mojo could no for sure whether his weapon worked the way he'd meant it to or not. It wasn't like they'd let him run tests on them to make sure he'd gotten it right.

But once that one word finally forced its way into her mind it was long before the other thought she'd been trying to stay away from squirmed in after it.

They were The Powerpuff Girls. Nothing had ever been strong enough to make one of them vanish without a word for a full day. And it didn't seem possible for _anything_ to be that strong.

Not unless it really was powerful enough to steal them away forever. 


	8. You've Still Got It

They slept in the trailer for a month and a half, crashing in a different parking lot every night so nobody would get on their case for repeated loitering. It was cramped with the extra person-Grubber and Billy, as the two least likely to complain, had always been forced to share the largest of the four fold-out beds, but with her there Snake and Arturo were forced to take another-and the fact that person was a _chick_ just made it seem even smaller.

It wasn't like they really cared about not being polite in front of a girl, especially not with a tomboy like the now-Belladonna, but there were somethings that they just couldn't do when the place stopped being guys-only. They had to be careful about changing, no matter how much of a rush they were in. The lock of the bathroom had been busted since before they'd bought the trailer, but with her there they had to remember not to just barge in and back out again if they heard a shout.

But in spite of all the extra hassles Ace really would have liked wait a little longer, build up more savings to replace what the Doc had taken, before finding an apartment. The problem was that no matter how often he reminded her that superpowers were illegal in Citiesville she just couldn't resist trying to do all the shit she seemed to instinctively remember she ought to be able to do. She hadn't made much improvement-maybe her hovering had gotten a couple of centimeter higher, maybe when she tried bending quarters she'd started making _just_ enough of a curve to see-but they didn't have tinted glass, curtains, or rods to hold the things if they bought them in the trailer and they could risk anyone just happening to look in if she ever had a sudden breakthrough.

Ten years before he would have just shouted at her until he'd scared her into knocking it off. Even five years ago, though he'd already been in the process of reforming, he still probably would've picked yelling over using up most of their savings on account of her _again_. But maybe he was starting to get soft as he got older and further away from his criminal youth, because he just couldn't find it in him get too harsh in his reminders about the law that was the whole reason he'd brought her to that dump of a town.

The thing was, she'd lost more that day in the ocean than he could even _imagine_. Everything, really, though he knew a good amount of that was his own fault for dragging her off where her family wouldn't be able to find her. What kind of complete waste of flesh would he have to be to try and make her stop trying to get back the one thing she could actually kind of remember about herself?

So he sucked up his annoyance and went looking for a place, and there he got lucky. It was a bigger place than he would have expected they could afford without more time to save; he'd figured that they'd all end up crammed into a small studio apartment, which'd still give them more space than the trailer, but instead they got a place with two good-sized bedrooms. The rent was brought down by two small problems, that all the windows looked out onto a blind alley-perfect for their purposes, no one would even be _able_ to look in on her experimenting with her powers-and that the building was right in the middle of the crappiest neighborhood in the whole crappy town.

Ace had almost laughed in the landlord's face when she gave him that reason, only holding back because she _was_ being more decent than most people ever were to him and the boys by warning them instead of keeping her mouth shut to make sure she got their cash. But the idea that they'd have a problem with the normal two-bit hoodlums of Citiesville was just _hilarious_. Anyone from Townsville who'd lived through a couple of monster attacks, from the littlest baby to the oldest granny, would probably laugh in the face of any mugger who tried coming after them, and they weren't just _anyone_. They were the Gangreen Gang!

They'd gone toe-to-toe with the Powerpuff Girls and, granted, gotten the crap beaten out of them every time. But just the fact that there'd been more than one time and they'd never been seriously injured showed how much tougher they were than the wimp criminals of a place that cowered away from superheroes. Though it did definitely help that the people living nearby were wary of them just because of the color of their skin; they'd cleared things up with the local authorities right after coming to town to make things easier for themselves-yeah, they were green, and yeah some of them had a few other physical differences from most people, but no powers to go with it-but if the local thugs were less likely to try anything with them just in case they could punch people through walls, well, nothing said they couldn't let _that_ little misunderstanding slide.

They didn't spend much on furnishing. Belladonna got the only real mattress, a second-hand one from a kids bed that was too small for anyone but her, tiny thing that she'd grown up to be, and even she needed to bend her knees a little to fit. The rest of the gang slept on the thin mattress pads from the trailer, Grubber, Arturo, and Snake in one room and Billy, as the only person Ace knew who probably didn't even realize there was a difference between guys and girls, was in with Belladonna.

Ace got the closest thing to a room of his own, of course, crashing on the couch they'd picked up at the same second-hand store where they'd gotten the mattress. Aside from that and a few lamps the whole place was furnished in cinderblock-and-plywood chic, tables and benches and shelves tossed together with practiced ease after years spent furnishing the shacks they used to live in the same way.

All-in-all it was pretty much a hole, but one that they could live on. And it was only until they got the big break that Ace was _sure_ had to be just around the corner; they'd actually been busier during their weeks in Citiesville than they'd ever been back home. The reputation they'd spent years trying to shake off somehow turned out to be a _good_ thing there, people _wanted_ to hire a group who'd given hell to the "horrible" girls who'd wrecked a hunk of their town years back and ruined a ton of businesses by cutting them off from the commuters who worked at them.

As long as they swore up and down that they really weren't going to try robbing anyone, at least.

So Ace just looked at the apartment as another stopping ground on their road to fame, another story they'd be able to tell the reporters about how far they'd come. From junk yard to trailer to shithole apartment in the armpit of town, they were climbing higher every step of the way and one day it'd be a story worth telling. He could put up with the plywood until then.

And that's where their life was, a few weeks after moving in, when she finally got fed up with being cooped up all day.

o 0 O 0 o

He was sprawled on the couch trying to find anything worth watching on TV, a futile effort when they only got six channels and he'd already been through all of them three times, when the door to her room suddenly slammed open with enough force to make him jump at the sound.

"I'm _sick_ of this," she said, skulking up to him with a scowl on her face that almost made her look like her old self. "Can we _go_ somewhere? I haven't even had a headache in weeks, I'm not gonna fall over dead if I go for a walk!"

That was the excuse he'd given for keeping her holed up all that time, and it was true that it was starting to wear thin. Heck, he was a little surprised that it had held her outside of a few grumbles for as long as it had; physically she'd been fine as far as he could tell since before they'd even gotten the apartment. But he hadn't questioned it, since as long as she was willing to stay inside they didn't need to worry about anyone recognizing her.

But there was a challenge in her voice this time that hadn't been there in those occasional grumbles, a tone that he recognized. It sounded like a little of Buttercup was rearing up where Belladonna had been willing to stay silent up until then and he was absolutely sure that she'd steeled herself to leave whether he was willing to take her somewhere or not, even if she was forced to do it in the giant old tee-shirt of Billy's that they'd given her for a nightgown.

He looked her over, deciding whether to go along with it himself, grab one of the other guys instead and tell them to take her down to the corner store and buy her an ice cream or something, or try and stop her. He did his best to pretend that he didn't know exactly who she was, and hadn't seen her close up a hundred times before, and figure out whether or not he'd recognize her if he saw her on the street. It was a little surprising to realize that he actually might not.

If they were still in Townsville it would be different. In Townsville if they tried walking down the street after just a couple of months without any kind of disguise she'd be recognized before they'd gone five feet. But in Citiesville the people hadn't seen her in the flesh since she was five-years-old, ever since then they'd only ever seen her in pictures and film when the girls had done something big enough to make the national news.

And after only two months she'd already changed enough that even though anyone who thought about it would definitely notice a resemblance they'd probably write it off as just that.

Two month of growth, washing with dish soap because it was cheaper than shampoo, and the fact that she didn't often bother to brush when she was stuck inside had left her hair limp and shaggy enough that it had lost its trademark flip, and her bangs kept falling into her eyes no matter how often she shook them away which helped hide just how crazily green they were. She'd lost weight besides, living on the same skimpy meals the gang had every night instead of getting to stuff herself on whatever her daddy brought home. Not all that much, but when he'd dragged her out of the ocean she'd still had the last traces of babyfat filling out her cheeks and when that vanished it made for a much bigger change to how she looked than if she'd lost a pound or two elsewhere.

Add the fact that being hidden away from the sun for two months had made her a couple of shades paler than she'd ever been before, and he thought they'd be completely safe wandering around for a couple of hours. Which'd be more than enough time to disguise her more thoroughly.

"All right, kid," he said with a shrug, shoving himself off the couch. "Let's see if we can find something to wear around here, then it's probably about time we got you some clothes of your own ain't it?"

She beamed at him like he'd just told her he'd be getting her all the riches in the world, and he tried to pretend that having it directed at him hadn't startled him into briefly stumbling mid-saunter.

o 0 O 0 o

Snake was the only one with jeans skinny enough to fit her, though she needed to roll up the cuffs until they were bulging around her ankles to keep from tripping over them. Ace lent her one of his own shirts and they stuffed a pair of Arturo's shoes with socks until her feet weren't sliding around in them. The end result looked for all the world like she was just a normal pretty girl, if one with a boyish sense of style. Nobody would ever look at her and guess that she'd spent most of her life fighting crime.

"_Don't_ forget-" he started to warn her as the left the building, but she cut him off quickly.

"I know, I know," she said, rolling her eyes at him, "I won't float or anything like that. You've only told me a thousand times."

"Start listening to me and I'll stop saying it," he told her, only just managing to soften his voice from a snap. "Seriously, kid, _Billy's_ better at listening to instructions. Not really something anybody wants to hear."

"I never do it where people can see. I'm not an _idiot_." She skipped ahead a few feet, staring up at the buildings like she'd never walked through a city before, which in a way she hadn't. Then she whirled back around to face him on the ball of one foot, and any annoyance she'd felt at him wiped away by a giddy grin. "Where're we going anyway? I want to stay out as long as I can!"

"We'll get the boring part over with first and see if you still feel that way." He reached out to flick one of the limp locks of her hair, "C'mon, we'll get something done about that rat's nest on your head." It wasn't actually that bad to his eyes, hair was hair, but if she was gonna start going out enough to start caring about her appearance again he wanted it further away from how it had always looked.

"_You're_ one to talk," she huffed. "You look like you've got a greasy mop stuck on your head."

"I'll let that one slide, but only because you can't even remember what a good hairstyle oughta look like." The closest hairdresser was only a block and half from their apartment building, a punkish place that was half tattoo parlor. Just the type of place to make her fit in better.

"Keep the bangs," he told her as they walked in. "They look good like that."

"Really?" she asked, blushing faintly and reaching up to brush the ends out of her eyes.

"Would I lie to you?" In truth it was just cheaper than trying to convince her to let him buy her colored contacts, but he'd never been against throwing around flattery when it made life easier.

There were only a couple of hairdressers around when they walked in and they were busy with customers, but one looked up with a smile when they walked in and said, "If you're here for us, I'll be done in a jiffy. Just sit down and think about what you want!"

"'A jiffy'?" Belladonna whispered to him out of the corner of her mouth. "Is it just my memory, or do people _not_ say that in real life?"

"Brace yourself to get your hair cut by the hairdresser time forgot," her muttered back. Years before he would have pitched it so the woman would just be able to overhear, just to be a dick, but a little older and a little wiser he'd learned it was better not to piss off people who had the ability to make you look like crap. He could keep the rule up for her sake.

She threw herself into one of the cheap plastic chairs set up near the door, making Ace wince at the way the legs seemed to sag slightly at the force of it though he didn't _think_ it'd be noticeable to anyone who wasn't keeping an eye out for signs of her power. She picked up one of the style books lying around and began flipping through it, but it wasn't long before she started to frown. "Ugh, you were right. This is _already_ boring. Can't we do something else?"

"_Well_..." he said, pretending to consider it, "Grubber's got clippers somewhere. We could always go back home for a minute and shave you bald real fast. That'd take care of the problem in no time."

She actually looked like she was seriously considering it for a minute, leaving him feeling torn about whether he should regret having said anything or excuse himself for a minute so he could go laugh himself sick at the thought that he might become the guy to shave a _Powerpuff Girl_ bald. That would be hilarious, there was no denying it.

Then she flipped to the next page of the photo book and her attention was caught by whatever she found there. She stared at it for a long moment then reached out to tug on his sleeve without pulling her eyes away from the page. "Hey," she said, voice low and uncertain. "Hey, does this look like... like it's..." She frowned, and bit down hard on her lower lip. "I don't know."

Ace tilted the book back so he could take a look and had to bite back a curse. It was a good thing she was still focused on the book, because he was sure that the look on his face in the second before he got it under control would have told her loud and clear that there was something worth pressing about here.

Anybody from Townsville who _didn't_ have amnesia would immediately get why the photo was ringing bells in some corner of her busted up mind. He'd be willing to bet it was deliberate unless the book was a Citiesville original; the model's blonde pigtails and the unnaturally blue contacts she was wearing might be written off as an attempt to make the blue streaks swirling through her hair stand out, but combined with the equally blue dress and the thick black belt cinched around her waist the whole look was decidedly Bubblesesque.

Unable to think of any better way to keep her from thinking too much about it Ace went with pretending to completely misunderstand what she was asking. "You thinkin' about asking for some streaks?" he asked. "Go ahead, we've got enough to cover it."

"Huh?" she asked, blinking at him as confusion finally broke the photo's hold on her.

"Not blue, though. If you're hangin' with us what you _need_ is some green." He brushed his fingertips over her hair, following the path the imagined lines of color could take, and while that was distracting her he quickly tugged the book out of her hands and tossed it away. "Good thinking. It'll be a cool look for you."

Maybe there was some part of her, maybe the same part that was keeping her memories hidden away, that didn't want her digging to hard at that injured part of her mind; Ace had figured he'd need to keep the patter going as nonstop as he could until the hairdresser took her off his hands, but instead she was already relaxing with the trouble clearing from her face. "That would be pretty awesome. It's really okay? Because I'll hold you to that!"

"Go for it, kid. Let the world know you're one of us now." 


	9. Going Outside

Belladonna felt like a whole knew person in the days following her haircut and small shopping spree. It was amazing how much better life could feel when you could actually get up and go _out_ in the morning instead of being cooped up in the same few rooms day, after day, after day.

She'd also never realized-at least, she didn't think she ever had, it felt like something that came as a new surprise instead of a reminder of something she'd already known-what a difference it made to have clothes that more-or-less fit instead of whatever she could borrow from a group of guys who seemed to come in every shape and size except her own. She wasn't totally sure that the style was really her, lots of leather, lots of black, ragged skirts and holey stockings, but Ace had found things for her that he said went with the look of the band and whenever she caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror with the guys she guessed that she was right. Aside from the color of her skin and the fact that she had tits she blended right in with them, like the only thing holding her at all apart was the hole in her memory.

And she liked that. She liked being part of a group, liked being more than just herself alone. The more comfortable she felt with them the more she felt that was a true part of who she was, something that had been part of her even before she lost her memory. There weren't many things she could say that about.

The whole city felt just a little bit off to her, the people more unfriendly than she expected, the streets more dirty, the sky too smoggy to be the right shade of blue. But she had no idea if it was _really_ wrong at all, or if as long as her memory didn't come back she'd feel exactly the same way if she found the nicest, cleanest, blue skysiest place in the world to walk around in because she just couldn't remember what would be right.

But, in spite of the offness, it didn't take her long to _love_ the city. She knew it might just be because she'd been bed-ridden so long that anywhere at all would have instantly won over her heart as long as she had enough space to wander around, but she didn't really care. She liked the way that as soon as she'd left her block she could walk for hours without ever seeing a place she'd passed by before if she just picked a right direction. She liked discovering people who _were_ friendly, who would chatter her ear off for hours and never seem to care if she was dull and quiet in return because she couldn't remember anything about what they were talking about to keep up her end of the conversation.

And she loved it for finally really giving her a chance to get to know the rest of the guys apart from Ace.

She guessed that it was probably weird that it had taken that long. The weeks she'd spent getting better should have been more than enough time to talking to them for ages, right? The problem was that Ace had seemed to be the only one comfortable spending time with her, the others avoiding her when they could and awkward with her when they couldn't. Ace said it was because they didn't know how to treat her now that she didn't remember them, and she got that, she really did. She didn't know how to treat _them_ either when to her they felt like almost-strangers instead of old friends. She wished it could be the same way with them as it was with Ace-he was always so easy with her, treating her like he never even thought about her amnesia, that it hadn't been hard at all to start feeling like she really had known him for years-but it just didn't work out that way. Even Billy, sharing her room with her, never really reached out to her, though she thought he was just following the lead of the others.

Not until she'd been given permission to spend time outside, and with it had come the condition that at least for awhile she could only leave the apartment if one of them was with her. She'd rolled her eyes at Ace's overprotectiveness, it was definitely starting to get old, but had agreed to the condition because if it meant getting to leave the apartment she could deal with it.

At first it had still mostly just been Ace sticking with her, and that was fine by her. His company was her favorite, even as the others started growing on her that didn't change. But every few days or so she'd start itching to get out of there while he was gone or busy with something, and she'd have to get one of the others to take his place. And wandering the streets of the city they started learning to relax around each other.

Grubber, she learned, seemed to have a sixth-sense when it came to finding the most weirdly interesting stores around no matter how well they were hidden away. With him she gorged herself sick in a candy shop where every treat was shaped and decorated like a beetle, and tried on hats decorated with insanely detailed miniature scenes until her sides hurt with laughing.

Billy, though dumb as could be, could also be nicer than any of the others. He was the one who was with her one day when they came across a little girl crying about her kitty being stuck up a tree, and had easily lifted Belladonna high enough that she could grab right onto the branch the was sitting on and pull herself up. Something in her had felt _right_ when she'd hopped easily back down with the cat under her arm and the girl had grabbed onto her hand to thank her again and again, but no memory had come back with the feeling to let her know why.

In the couple of months that they'd lived in the city L'il Arturo had seemed to befriend every street performer that worked within miles of their apartment, and their walks together would lead to him chattering rapidly at some juggler or musician and the next thing she knew their performance would seem geared straight at the two of them. Over a few weeks those talks seemed to naturally shift until suddenly Belladonna was being included in the chatter, until finally Belladonna and Arturo kept up a conversation even after they're walked away from a busker and from then on they never had trouble talking to each other.

Snake was the hardest by far. Even after she'd really started to feel like she could call all the others friends even if she still couldn't remember knowing them before he kept acting twitchy and nervous around her, avoiding being the one to go with her when he could and hanging back silently while she did whatever she wanted when he couldn't. It didn't change until the day she'd hopped on a trolley through the city just to see where it went, neither of them realizing that it went straight out to the bay.

She screamed when she saw the water, even though it would embarrass her forever to think back on it, and flung herself straight over the safety railing surrounding the trolley and onto the street below. She was running the minute she hit the ground, tearing over the ground to get herself away as fast as she could. She only stopped when it was out of sight again, and she would have kept going if she hadn't remembered that he would be looking for her.

He found her leaning against a building, shivering with her arms curled around herself, her mind filled with tossing waves and jagged rocks and the great black pit they'd left in her brain. For a minute he couldn't talk, short of breath from running to keep up, but finally he hissed out, "Ssssssshit. You okay?"

She nodded, then took a deep breath and told him, "Sorry, that was really dumb. I wouldn't have been so stupid if I'd known it was coming, but when it surprised me like that-" She shook her head, and let her arms drop. "Is it okay if we get a cab home instead of walking? My head really hurts."

"Ssssure," he said, pressing a steadying hand against her back as she started moving like he'd forgotten to be uncomfortable with her, and that was that.

From that moment on Belladonna could really call herself an accepted member of the Gangreen Gang. 


End file.
